Database programmers or administrators (DBAs) are skilled in the language and techniques of database query languages and database design. As a result, DBAs can rapidly and efficiently construct search queries for a given database. However, DBAs often lack an understanding of specific industry data and its topology and/or lexicon.
For example, the legal industry will have their data organized according to its meaning and topology, which are readily recognized by lawyers. Moreover, the data itself will conform to a vocabulary (lexicon) used within the legal industry. Conversely, the health care industry will have their data organized differently and will use different vocabularies from that which are used within the legal industry.
Analysts or professionals within a particular industry are adept at understanding the data and its inter-relationships. Thus, analysts will often have to interface with DBAs for purposes of creating useful and meaningful searches that are translated into a query language format for purposes of searching a database. The DBA provides the technical expertise for interacting with the database, and the analyst provides the technical expertise for understanding the data within the database and its meaning to a particular industry.
It is apparent that generally two separate resources are needed to effectively access and utilize industry data contained within an electronic database. This coordination presents challenges for an enterprise because the schedules and workloads of each resource may hinder timely development of search queries. Additionally, dual resources for a single task (e.g., search generation) are more expensive than having a single resource.
Additionally, often the data within the database is voluminous and any search executed against the database may therefore produce too many results. In other words, an analyst may need to further enlist the services of a DBA for purposes of filtering or organizing search results into a more meaningful subset of results. This further delays a project within an enterprise, unduly ties up a DBA, and adds additional expense for the enterprise.
It is therefore desirable to have improved techniques for assembling or generating search queries and for managing results sets associated with the execution of those search queries.